Christian. Entrepreneur.Volunteer.Philanthropist

Tag: loss

Thursday I received a text that said “did Raven reach out to you?” I didn’t think much of it, maybe some family drama. I simply replied “no about what?” The next five words made my heart sink, “her father died last night.” I picked up my phone to make a call I never wanted to make: to welcome my pure-hearted, genuine spirited, kind cousin to a club she never wanted to join. She answered the phone, strong, “holding it together.” What she didn’t know was that I was a mess. You all know my relationship with crying. When I say, I was broken down on that phone call. (Of course I hid my tears from her) My heart hurt for her. As I tried to explain that the studies were wrong, there may be five stages (sometimes seven) of grief but you don’t experience them in a particular order, you bounce around them. And the truth is, you don’t start healing once the body is buried or cremated. You have to be intentional with your healing and sometimes the denial/avoidance stage is the longest.

Jasmine and Joe Lott

It will be two years in October that my dad has been gone. The truth is, I just began moving out of the denial stage. I literally got back to Houston after his funeral and picked up two more jobs, that I really didn’t need. I started studying for the GMAT. I filled my time up completely to avoid dealing with the reality that I will never see my father again. I was “okay.” I kept it together. I was slaying this grief thing. I remember my friend Jasmine Lott, whose father passed in 2012 texted me that “I’m here to tell you it never goes away. The pain the tears. I still wake up crying. It’s like it happened yesterday. Keep praying and crying wake up and just live your life that’s all you really can do.” I remember the feeling I felt when I read that text. It was so sad and morbid and I was in denial so I was like “Nah that won’t be me.” …Then I lost control. First, I started crying in inappropriate places. Then, I started acting out. (All things JLott had warned me about) I went numb, but thing causing the pain was a reality.

Raven and Her Dad

I tried to explain all this to Raven by simply saying “It’s a process and the best thing you can do is to deal with everything you are feeling.” I know what she is about to go through and that breaks my heart. Everyone’s grief is different, yet the same. Raven’s father was a Mexican native who was deported when she was a baby. She was just beginning to build a relationship with him and was robbed of that because someone took his life. That is an additional level of grief and trauma to deal with. (Honestly, at this point I am thinking to myself, Christina this is some sad ish, you need to make this post positive girl.) Truth is Father’s Day is not Happy for a group of people. Maybe life will turn around to make it a happy period for us that feel grief. Maybe we will have a child born on Father’s Day Weekend or some other positive life event. But for now, for me, for Raven who lost her dad the Tuesday before Father’s Day….it just ain’t that happy.

Ironically enough, my Soror Melanie made a Facebook post on Friday sharing that she had not spoken to her father since she was 19 and this year decided to reach out for Father’s Day and learned that he had passed. Raven and Melanie were robbed of something that I will never personally understand but I can definitely empathize with. So where’s the positivity in this post, that you all have support. Jasmine Lott was my support. She was the one person who could say anything to me and I would not get offended because I knew that she knew EXACTLY how I felt. (Our relationships with our fathers were extremely similar, even their deaths were similar) I also had support from those I had not been previously close with. An old co-worker Jessica Cain gave me so much support in an exchange in Facebook messenger. And my friend Stevie. Stevie and I will be spending Father’s Day together moving forward, celebrating the lives and legacies of our amazing fathers.

I am a Grey’s Anatomy fanatic. And I share the same morbid humor and sentiments of the writers of the show. When the character George’s father died, Cristina Yang said to him, “There’s a club. The Dead Dads Club. And you can’t be in it until you’re in it. You can try to understand, you can sympathize. But until you feel that loss… My dad died when I was nine. George, I’m really sorry you had to join the club.” George replied, “I… I don’t know how to exist in a world where my dad doesn’t.” Cristina then said, “Yeah, that never really changes.”

I am really sorry you have to join the club, but please know you have support.

I have been collecting little puzzle pieces here and there because I wanted to share my experience through the art of words. I haven’t had the time to organize the pieces and put the puzzle together…but it is coming.

Since my dad’s death, so much has happened. So much good has happened. So much good has happened that at times I even feel guilty. I’m not sure why I feel guilty, because there is a vacancy in my heart that prevents me from really enjoying or celebrating the good. I have no complaints about life at this time….except one: I am terribly sad. I smile. I go out. I have a good time. I live. I thrive. BUT at some point while doing all of these things, I find myself in a dark place. I don’t share these moments with others often. I hide my tears. I slip away if I can. I try to reason myself out of that place. But I have a fear that I will be visiting this place for the rest of my life.

On the daily basis, I keep it together 99% of the time publicly. Today, I have literally been a crying mess. I’ll just assume that most of you reading this do not know my personally. So, I’ll let you in on a little secret….I use to be a cry baby. Like I cried ALL THE TIME. Somewhere between my good friend Joann (who told me directly that she did not like me when we met because I cried all the time…I am now her daughter’s God-Mother), my good friend Justin (who would look at me emotionless while I cried, until I calmed down and then told me that what I was crying about would not matter in 5 years) and my college boyfriend (who was emotionally challenged himself and had very cold but honest responses whenever I was overly emotional about anything), I have grown to DESPISE crying. When I cry (which is rare) I actually get angry at myself. The conversation I usually have with myself is a cocktail of what those three would say to me.

Today, I woke up from a terrible, but painfully accurate dream and decided I was not going to allow it to affect my day. I went to a meeting at the Junior League of Houston, which went well and I realized that I was finally enjoying my time in the league and making friends, which I previously had found challenging….THEN, I went to therapy. (I started therapy again [HUGE ADVOCATE OF THERAPY] a week ago because along with my hate of crying I have grown to be as emotionally challenged as my ex. Which has led me to force my emotions into the box that I can feel the lid coming off of daily [another post for another day]) Therapy opened Pandora’s Box (Pun Unintended). I began thinking about things that I usually avoid thinking about during the day. A friend introduced me to audiobooks, I wrapped up Joyce Meyer’s The Battlefield of the Mind (which literally took me 2 years to read until the audiobook, which took a week to finish) and I began Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. This was probably a bad idea. Sheryl lost her young husband two years ago. And even though our circumstances are different, her discussion of pain and grief triggered something in me that therapy had earlier exposed.

As I am listening to the audiobook, I am catching up on administrative work for my new job, which I love….and I am crying…..like papers are wet, vision is blurry, crying. Now I am pissed that I am crying. However, I had added an additional task, I am texting my best friend Jasmine and my good friend Nina, basically telling them that I should have dealt with this crap (emotions) a long time ago because now it is interrupting my life. When my dad died, I didn’t stop. I didn’t cry at the funeral. I didn’t deal with it. I told myself, “this is your new normal, you have to figure it out…and not screw up this new job.” And that’s what I did, I got back engaged in the activities, commitments, and goals that I was involved in before his diagnosis. I got a new job, expanded my Houston network, started paying down debt, was accepted into a MBA prep program and got into Grad School (different program from MBA). I was getting my life, the life he wanted me to live, back together. I never took…wait…I still haven’t taken a moment to stop and deal with the great loss I experienced, the aftermath that left me more hurt, or what all of this means. I just kept going. So, my emotions come out in inappropriate ways, such as isolating myself from folks, excessive Instagram posts about my dad, and random late night Facebook posts explaining in detail exactly how I was feeling in that moment. Let’s not even discuss the random crying in public places that leaves me livid. Or bringing my dad up in every conversation I have with friends….and strangers. Oh and there is the leaning on inappropriate people from my past as well. There is that. Bottomline is….I have to deal with this before I really do, “screw up this new job.”

There is also the issue of appearances. If it looks like I have been doing so well, what will people think if they knew that I am just now beginning to deal with his death. I’m sure I already look crazy between the Instagram & Facebook posts. Am I too open about my pain? Are people thinking that its been…..there it was: Today marks the 6 month anniversary of my daddy’s death. 6 months ago, the world as I knew it for 25 years changed. I have not been keeping up with the time passed since his death, because frankly, I go on like he isn’t dead. I wasn’t consciously keeping up with it, but subconsciously, I had to have known, which explains all the damn crying. (THANK GOD I work remotely on Mondays). As I figure this out, I’ll do my best to keep you all in the loop. I think the approach I took today was best….Just stop everything and write.

Daddy, there aren’t enough words in all the languages in the universe to explain how much I miss you. (Crap, here comes the crying again)

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